I Just Learned Sweets Was Never Supposed To Die On Bones

There are some days I wake up on the Internet to cute videos of children hugging their dads at the bus stop, or at least amusing footage of Christopher Nolan wandering around Universal Hollywood. Then, there are other days I’m confronted with facts about some of my favorite shows that make my pulse race in discomfort or disbelief. That’s what happened this morning when I learned Sweets was never supposed to die on Bones. Yes, you read that right.

You remember Sweets. He was the awkward-yet-charismatic psychologist and profiler who worked closely with the already-terrific Bones and Booth on cases for years. He ultimately was murdered and left to die in a parking garage, having one final conversation with his partners in solving crime before he succumbed to his injuries.

When he died, he left the team with an enduring message about believing in humanity that still lives rent-free in my brain. Sweets leaving the show was a few seasons after it hit its peak creatively, but it was the final moment in the series that I can remember still being really satisfied with the drama. It was a bittersweet and memorable TV episode, but it was never supposed to even happen.

So, Why Was Sweets Killed Off Then?

John Francis Daly is also a talented writer and director (as well as the adorable kid playing Sam in Freaks and Geeks). When Bones was still filming Season 8, he was hired to write and direct the 2015 movie Vacation. This was his first big opportunity as a director, though he’d written Horrible Bosses and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone with his writing partner Jonathan Goldstein prior to landing the gig. He physically had to be away from the show if he wanted to film the movie, and the creators ultimately decided if he was going to go, it needed to be in the “most painful way imaginable," with Stephen Nathan saying at the time:

Stephen Nathan also told THR while the show was still airing that they didn’t “want to hold” John Francis Daly back, but it became clear that once he chose the directing route, it made the most sense to kill the character off. He also elaborated:

So, yes, it was a creative choice. And it sounds like it was not Daly’s creative choice.

John Francis Daly Didn’t Really Want To Go

Vacation at first was going to shoot over the summer between Season 8 and Season 9 of Bones. With that schedule. John Francis Daly would have been able to do both shows. However, he said in a LiveJournal interview that the movie got pushed a whole year. It would go on to film in September and October of 2014 – right when network TV production is in schedule.

Ultimately, it was the Bones producers that told Daly him simply being gone for four months wasn’t an option.

None of these quotes contradict one another, but two things stand out to me. The first is that John Francis Daly did not want to stop playing Sweets. The second is the show didn’t want to be Daly’s second choice. Those two things naturally were never going to align, and I do agree if you are going to write a character off, that character might as well go out with a bang.

This is definitely one of those cases, though, where I wish things had been able to play out differently. I had trouble getting past Sweets’ death, even more so than Vincent Nigel-Murray, which also stuck with me. I do think Sweets’ death marks the end of some fans’ viewership in a way that doesn’t usually or always happen when a character is killed off. Like many fans, I broke up with Bones a short time later, and the show ultimately ended with Season 12.

It worked out for John Francis Daly, who has gone on to be a big part of fun and underrated movies like Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and box office winners like Game Night. I'm not sure it worked out as well for Bones.